Ends
by Angelus1
Summary: This isn't the end, Mac.


**Spoilers: None that I know of.**

**Disclaimer: Not mine. Mac, Harm, Chegwidden, etc. belong to DPB and Bellisarius.**

**Author's Notes: This has been sitting on my hard-drive for quite some time now. For some unknown reason, I just got back into the JAG fandom, and with a little tweaking, I think it's finally ready for public consumption. Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

It's a cold, rainy Sunday in March. A.J. Chegwidden has been dead for four days and Mac hasn't seen Harmon Rabb in over eight years.

By some unspoken agreement, they meet outside the church shortly before the service is about to begin. It's an incredible turnout, but none of them are really surprised - A.J. was nothing if not influential. As the throng of officers and civilians mill about, the small group stands, impassive, in front of the church.

Life has clearly been good to Bud and Harriet, and rightly so; Mac can't think of two more deserving people. They are bright and healthy despite the circumstances, and between them is their firstborn son, the namesake of the Admiral they're here to honor. A.J. Roberts has grown up quite gracefully, and even at fifteen, an age where one would expect him to be gangly and awkward - especially being the son of Bud Roberts - he is slender and muscular with Harriet's white-blonde hair, Bud's wide, all-seeing eyes, and twin dimples poking out from the corners of his mouth. Mac knows that it'll only be a few months, if even that long, before he's breaking hearts. The twins are at home with a babysitter, Mac assumes, but she just saw them last week and they are as precious and precocious as ever.

Sturgis Turner died suddenly last year. Bobbi had had him on loan to the CIA at his own request for a more exciting billet - a top-secret mission so carefully guarded that there had been no funeral, no service. They had only heard about it through the grapevine three weeks later. Chaplain Matthew Turner, still alive and well, leads Varese, his widow, over to the silent group. She is elegantly dressed despite tired eyes and a sad smile, and will be singing during the ceremony, which her former father-in-law will be performing.

Mikey Roberts strides over to his brother and sister-in-law with Jen Coates on his arm, her diamond engagement ring sparkling even in the dim gray afternoon. Their engagement party was supposed to be tomorrow, and the Admiral was to walk her down the aisle. She shrugs off Francesca and Mattonni's greetings as politely as possible, opting instead to head directly for her adopted family. Collectively, they have all always looked out for Jen, despite how tough she has always tried to appear. To see her so broken only makes this that much harder.

Harm, predictably, arrives last. He's only halfway up the walkway when Mac feels his presence, without even having to turn around. He moves to stand behind her, busying himself with shaking off his coat, closing his umbrella...anything for a distraction.

"I think we need to start heading inside," Chaplain Turner suggests gently. Silently, the group follows him in. Mac recognizes so many of the faces lining the pews - Francesca, to the left, seated with the rest of A.J.'s immediate family. Clayton Webb, who was forced out of hiding six years ago. The former SecNav, now retired. All of the Cresswells. Mac idly wonders if this many people will show up to her own funeral.

As the Chaplain prepares to begin, they slide into the first pew, one after the other. Varese ends up on Mac's right. To her left, unsurprisingly, is Harm. His warm, solid bulk does more to comfort her than anything else, despite the fact that they don't touch, don't speak, don't even look at each other.

The Chaplain's eulogy is meaningful and heart-felt, but Mac finds her mind wandering. She feels like she's heard this speech far too many times in her life. And as the years slip away from them so quickly, she knows that she will only hear it more often. Before long, she's going to be the one in the coffin. It seems ridiculous to say so, but funerals do tend to highlight all of the missed opportunities in life. All of the clichés about not letting your life pass you by, seizing the moment...Mac has never been good at that. The man sitting beside her, of course, is the prime example of this.

She wishes she knew where things went wrong between them; wishes she could pinpoint that exact moment when it all began to take its toll - the arguments, the insults, the subterfuge and avoidance. Of course, identifying that moment won't solve the problem; somewhere along the way, they each lost patience with the other's inability to commit, or even to communicate. There had been shouting matches, more shouting matches, and then finally, Harm's transfer request. No, the problem hadn't been solved; it had simply been put on hold for eight long years. But time, Mac feared, while cooling their anger, had also cooled their passion for one another; that ever-burning flame that had made them such a good team in every sense of the word...had it dwindled, or gone out completely?

"A.J. was not just an officer," Chaplain Turner was saying. "He was a leader, a mentor, and a friend. He adopted each one of his subordinates into his fold as if they were his own children. He turned JAG into not just a job, but a family. If you take one thing away from his death, make it this: A.J. Chegwidden devoted his life not only to defending and protecting his country, but also to shaping all of you into the people he knew you could be. Be that person. My son's life was better for knowing him - was yours? Remember all he taught you, his expectations for you. Don't let his work go to waste."

Mac was stricken. The Admiral, though he had never come out and said so, had always been one of the strongest supporters of her relationship with Harm. She had always suspected that his nurturing nature came from his own failed attempts at love. But where this could have hardened a lesser man, made him jaded and bitter, A.J. was the opposite. He had gone out of his way to make sure that Bud and Harriet were kept together, had been a godfather to little A.J. Even when A.J. was no longer quite so little, his namesake would offer companionship, support, and advice for those issues that he wasn't always comfortable discussing with his parents. Bud and Harriet fit together in that strange way that no one could quite explain, but everyone could see. The Admiral saw everything, and no doubt he had spotted it even before they had. Had they been stationed somewhere else, their courtship and marriage might have been an impossibility, too.

_He did the same for us_, Mac realized. As brazen and uncaring of the rules as Harm could be sometimes, A.J. had seen past that. He had seen the noble, honest man that was always there, even if he sometimes got a bit carried away. Another C.O. might not have fought for him, but A.J. had always kept him by his side. _By my side, too_. He had supported Mac's engagement to Mic Brumby, but Mac had never talked to him about it one-on-one; in fact, she had avoided it at all costs. Because she knew that if she asked for honesty from him, she would have gotten it. And the answer wouldn't have been one that she wanted to hear.

_I'm sorry we let you down._ There were tears threatening to leak out of Mac's eyes, but she blinked them away. She could blame Cresswell for trying to split them up, she could blame all of the people that had inadvertently gotten between them. But at the end of the day, this was no one's fault but their own. Once upon a time, they had had something special, something powerful. But they had let it slip away from them. This time, when the tears returned, she didn't bother trying to stop them. She remembered that feeling - the one that she had always gotten in the pit of her stomach when he walked into the room; when they solved a case together, when they shared their secrets, when they fell asleep together on her couch. That feeling had been the driving force that had kept her going even when he was away, because she knew that when he returned to her, that it would be even stronger. But this time, he hadn't come back, and that was what she was mourning now - that feeling.

For the first time in eight years, Mac turned her head and looked directly at Harmon Rabb.

Even in profile, with half of his face blocked from her view, he was still the most handsome man she had ever encountered. Or so she thought. Maybe that wasn't entirely true; but it was his personality, his character, that made him so much more attractive, and that only filled her with more regret. She opened her mouth to say something - anything. But her head was spinning and she couldn't get her thoughts under control long enough to form a coherent sentence.

Without a word, Harm reached over and took her hand.

Mac's frenzied state of mind was immediately calmed. She held on tight, interlocking their fingers. Her other hand rested on his elbow, and he shifted closer to her, allowing her to lean her head on his chest. When she did so, he leaned down and placed a gentle kiss to her temple, then leaned down further to murmur in her ear:

"This isn't the end Mac. You and me? We have no end."

The church was filled with the sounds of family and friends delivering their own thoughts and memories; with weeping and comforting and low, hushed conversation. But all Mac heard was the slow, steady beating of Harm's heart under her ear. And if she ever let herself believe in such ridiculous notions, she would have sworn that for the first time in nearly two decades, it was fully in-synch with her own.


End file.
